Our Top 12 Stories & Sections of 2018

A Review of the Biggest Stories and Content of the Year on Durand Now

Posted by Durand Now at 1:23am 1/2/19

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There were 132,333 visits to Durand Now between January 1st 2018 and December 31st 2018 by an average of 12,012 unique visitors per month for a total of 189,342 page views (pvs).

The top three most trafficked months of 2018 were May (22,376 pvs), January (21,595) and September (20,404). There were an average of 15,778 page views per month.

We are forced to rely heavily on traffic data that was documented throughout 2018, rather than reviewing existing online data, due to an apparent loss of some first quarter stats; an issue that occurred after we redesigned the website and left our former analytics platform in favor of Google Analytics in May. While we believe the numbers that we collected throughout the year are accurate, they are overall numbers, not stats on specific stories. Thus, our top 12 list may be impacted. We have done additional research on daily traffic flow in hopes of ensuring the accuracy of the list.

But before we get to the list, let's talk about the page view numbers. They're low. It's disappointing. We did expect to take a hit as we invested time this year redesigning and rolling out all new sites on the Mobirise platform. We also spent time launching our new podcast, Shiawassee Radio. We also expected number fluctuations as we moved from the previous analytics platform to Google Analytics. Still, this is a much bigger disparity than anticipated.

However, there is one very important statistic -- an improvement -- and it's the most important statistic there is; the average number of unique visitors to the site each month. In 2017, we averaged around 9,300. In 2018, we topped 12,000! So what can be gleaned from this information?

MORE people are coming to Durand Now for news.

A variety of reasons could potentially explain the decrease in page views. The absence of a big story that spread quickly or, simply, fewer pages to read -- those are just a couple. The silver lining is that, with the rebuild and months of learning and perfecting the new site design behind us, and an all new product to further connect our communities, 2019 is looking bright.

Listen to the new Shiawassee Radio podcast!

03. Corunna Robotics

02. A Hazzard County Christmas

Josh Strickland talks with Pastor Steve Rau from Shiawassee Harvest Church about the church's holiday concert event featuring the stars of the hit TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, and how it came together.